Administering the Generic Import Wizard

Aptify includes a wizard that imports any data into the system. This wizard is ideal for recurring imports of small sets of data. Note that this tool is not intended to be used for data conversions.

By default, the standard Aptify installation supports importing from tab-delimited text files, Microsoft Excel files, and Microsoft Access databases.

The following steps provide an overview of how to use the wizard to import data into Aptify:

1. Identify the data that you want to import into Aptify. Also, identify the following:
   • The current format of the data.
   • The location where the data should be added into Aptify. For example, for the customer contact information to import, you will want to import that data into the Persons entity.
      
2. If the data's format is not one of the existing source type, create a new Import Source Types record. See Creating New Import Source Types.
   • Note that creating new source types requires that a developer write code.
      
3. Create a new Import Sources record for your data. This record ties a import source type to the entity to which you are importing the data. Also, you can specify an object that overwrites the default record matching and posting behavior with your own business logic. See Creating Import Sources.
   • This assumes that a suitable Import Source does not already exist. However, you can use an existing source if your system already has a record that specifies the data's source type, its fields, and the target entity.
   • Note that creating your business logic for the matching and posting processes requires that a developer write code. Alternatively, you can define and modify matching criteria while running the Generic Import wizard, reducing the amount of code a developer needs to write to specify different matching logic. See Running the Generic Import Wizard for more details.
      
4. Run the Generic Import wizard from the Import Runs service. See Running the Generic Import Wizard. 
5. Match import run details with existing records in the entity within the Import Runs record that was automatically generated by the wizard. Then, post the import run details to create new records for unmatched items. See Matching and Posting Import Results.
6. Review the newly created records to confirm that the data was successfully imported into Aptify.

This topic covers the following sub-topics:

• Creating New Import Source Types
• Creating Import Sources
• Running the Generic Import Wizard
• Matching and Posting Import Results